The Federal Government has called on all stakeholders in the sanitation sector to harmonise all policies to enable the country meet its target to end open defecation by 2025.
This was the thrust at a one- day Inter-Ministerial meeting on the 2018 Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water Report in Abuja on Monday.
The Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu said that with Nigeria being the leading economy in Africa, failure in achieving its Sustainable Development Goals targets on sanitation would prevent the entire continent from meeting the same goal.
According to him, Nigeria has the second highest number of people defecating in the open after India, stressing that the country loses over 4 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product to poor sanitation.
Adamu, represented by the Director, Water Quality Control and Sanitation, Emmanuel Awe said that the uncoordinated efforts of stakeholders had delayed efforts to improve sanitation and hygiene needs of the country by 2030.
He said that there was need to link all country efforts into one harmonised policy toward driving the campaigns at ending open defecation in the country.
He said: “Given also that only eight years of available time left to achieve ODF Nigeria goal between 2018 and 2025, it is evident that the goal will certainly not be delivered pursuing business as usual and adhering to existing modus operandi.
“Given the number of deaths and morbidity caused by poor sanitation, it is paramount that sanitation in Nigeria is declared as an emergency and is dealt with accordingly in a campaign mood.
“It is therefore proposed that under the leadership of the Federal Ministry of Water Resources and in alignment with the provisions of the already officially endorsed National ODF roadmap, an ODF Nigeria campaign is launched.”
Adamu noted that a well-structured sanitation policy would help generate a well-crafted and intense sanitation campaign to generate a political discourse at national, sub national and household levels to help in prioritisation of sanitation.
According to him, such efforts will help move sanitation up on the development agenda of the federal, state and local governments.
He also said there was need to achieve the overall goal of changing social norms at the community level to achieve total rejection of open defecation.
Earlier, a representative of the Ministry of Education, Lami Amodu, said there was need for the National Water Resources Bill to be passed to help halt proliferation of boreholes in the country.
According to him, the quality of water in public places including schools is alarming with the issue of poor access to public toilets also being a huge challenge.
Amodu cited efforts of the Lagos State Government in improving access to public toilets, saying the law on all petrol stations to build public toilets was commendable and worthy of emulation by all other states.
She said that there was the need for a bye-law and legislations to sanction perpetrators of open defecation, “as is obtainable in Nasarawa state’’, saying this would go a long way to discourage the practice.
Also, Ebele Okeke, the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Ambassador, appealed to state governments to prioritise improving access to water and sanitation.
According to her, the recent declaration of a state of emergency in the water and sanitation sector has shown the highest political will toward reversing the trend of poor services.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that a projection of the Joint Monitoring Progress Report 2015 revealed that Nigeria is unlikely to achieve the target of completely eradicating open defecation by 2025 and universal use of safe sanitation by 2030.
According to a 2012 World Bank Report, about 122,000 Nigerians including 87,000 children under-five years die annually from diarrhoea; nearly 90 per cent being directly attributed to water, sanitation and hygiene.
The objective of the UN-GLAAS is implemented by WHO to monitor the human resources, finance and the enabling environment laws, plans and policies, institutional arrangements required to extend and sustain WASH systems and services to all, especially to the most disadvantaged population groups.
GLAAS also analyses the factors associated with progress, to identify drivers and bottlenecks, highlight knowledge gaps and assess strengths and challenges within and across countries.
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